


Applied Meddling

by Peppermint



Category: Doctor Who, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-24
Updated: 2009-11-24
Packaged: 2017-10-03 16:30:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Peppermint/pseuds/Peppermint
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Undercover meddling on the Death Star was about the most fun a Time Lord could have.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Applied Meddling

The Doctor was walking along empty corridors, wondering where the TARDIS had crash-landed him this time. The corridors did seem vaguely familiar, but then again, space station corridors all looked an awful lot alike. It was incredible, the way you could walk through any kind of corridor from the 25th to the 2471st centuries without ever feeling disorientated.

He smiled to himself. Humans were really amazing, even when they were being dull.

Ah. Judging by the stormtrooper he'd just bumped into, maybe a more correct term was 'humanoids'.

'Oh, this is brilliant.'  
'Who are you?'  
'Oh, er, hello! Doctor John Smith, I'm an engineer. Thermodynamics expert.'  
'I'm gonna need to see some ID.'

If Jedi mind tricks worked on stormtroopers, there was no reason psychic paper shouldn't.

'All right. Where are you supposed to work?'  
'The main... central... control room thing.'  
'You mean the bridge.'  
'Yeah, that's right, the bridge!'  
'I'll lead you there.'  
'Sounds great!'

The Doctor grinned and followed the guard around. He didn't even remember the last time he'd followed a guard, and not the other way around. It was great, from time to time.

It became boring really quickly, though. Having nothing else to do, he settled on babbling.

'Hey, what's your name?'  
'Do you really need to know?'  
'Course I do! I can't really call you "stormtrooper", can I?'  
'I'd rather you didn't call me at all.'  
'Oh, come on...'  
'Just... call me Bob, all right?'  
'All right, Bob the Stormtrooper.'

'Bob' didn't answer. He just shrugged and kept walking.

'D'you have a little shop?'  
'What?'  
'Do you have a shop? You know, a little shop, so people can shop.'  
'This is a military base. There's no need for shops;'  
'It would be small, not a big shop, just a little one.'  
'It still would be useless. We never see any civilians.'  
'Except me.'  
'Except you.'

 

*  
* *

 

This was so fun. Like the field trips they used to do with their Intervention and Exology teacher when he was still at the Academy. They used to call it "Applied Meddling". Ah, those were the days... He sighed, and went back to manipulating the computer network. It was tricky: you had to convince the computer engineer just right beside you you made it more resistant to attacks, when you actually made the hackers' job the easiest possible.

A blueprint of the garbage and recycling system popped up. He looked at it for a few seconds, and turned to the man to his right.

'Hey, ever thought of putting a stop button inside the garbage crusher?'  
'Why?'  
'Dunno, in case someone gets stuck down there?'  
'You'd have to be downright stupid to get stuck in the garbage crusher. We don't need stupid people.'  
'Ah. Yeah. I suppose you're right.'

 

*  
* *

 

'Doctor Smith, what are you doing?' said a muffled voice.  
'Sorry, what was that?'  
'What are you doing?' the voice repeated, louder.

Apparently the voice belonged to the owner of the black shoes that had just appeared in the Doctor's (somewhat diminished) field of vision. He had met more engineers today than during the last quarter of a century.

'Just rerouting some of your tractor beam's connections.'  
'The connections are fine, I checked them myself only a few hours ago!'

Knees, hands and a face successively appeared. The Doctor interrupted his work and turned around as much as he could in the shallow space between the machinery and the ground.

'Really, what are you doing?' the engineer sighed.  
'Told you, rerouting.'  
'What for?'  
'Your local reinforced forcefield and your tractor beam are shunt connected.'  
'Because it's safer this way. I don't see what's wrong with that.'  
'It's safer, but less powerful while using much more energy. Connecting it serially would make it much more efficient.'  
'What about the feedback risks?'  
'Oh, come on, they're minimal!'  
'And what if soemone blows up one of the units?'  
'Taking care of safety isn't your job, it's the stormtroopers'! If they can't make sure the base is safe, you can't be blamed, can you? You're just an engineer!'  
'I'm still in the military.'  
'Well I'm not. I'll take full responsibility, don't worry.'

The engineer stood up again.

'Very well.'

He left without another word, obviously quite vexed. The Doctor chuckled silently. The engineer would be so infuriated when he got fired because of a mistake that wasn't even his. And then the Death Star would explode, all resentment would vanish and be replaced by gratefulness.

 

*  
* *

 

'There's something missing.'  
'I'm sorry?'  
'Look, over here.'

The Doctor pointed at the centre of the blueprint projection.

'Your main reactor's gonna overheat if you don't add another exhaust port.'  
'No, I don't think so. I ran the simulations and calculations at least ten times over on three different computers.'  
'Well I think you should be ready anyway, if anything goes wrong. But of course, if you're absolutely positive that nothing can ever go wrong...'  
'All right, all right, how would you do it then?'

The Doctor quickly sonic-doodled a long chimney going from the reactor all the way to the surface on the blueprint.

'There. That's much better.'  
'A direct link from the surface to the main reactor? Won't that be risky? I mean, if someone dropped even a single proton torpedo in  
there...'  
'Nah, no way the rebels could know about this. And even if someone knew, they'd have to be Luke Skywalker to be able to aim that well.'  
'Luke who?'  
'Oh, he's a... friend of mine. Well, will be. Well, I hope so. Anyway, he's nobody to worry about. Especially if you're gonna blow up because some reactor overheats, don't you think?'  
'I suppose you're right.'  
'That's me, always right!'

The Doctor smiled another of his Cheshire Cat grins, then went on his bouncy way back to the Tardis. Undercover meddling was so easy when you were supposed to be there all along. Undercover meddling on the Death Star was even better. It was an impressive piece of technology, of course, but it was built to blow planets up. Placing weak points all over it so it could be destroyed was about the most fun a Time Lord could have.

With the exception of stealthily tying Tarkin's shoelaces together and sniggering when he fell over in a very undignified way, of course.


End file.
